r/getting_over_it

I’m 23, nb. I have a primarily solitary office job. I live alone. I do not want to date. I moved to a city where I know very little people, and the people I do know haven’t had my best interests at heart recently. I’ve never really struggled to make friends before but there was always the circumstance that gave them to me like school or a shared class or a job. Now there is no circumstances. I’m bored of everything I do alone. What do I do? Any advice? Anything that makes the loneliness better?

I’m struggling with the kind of solitude you feel when someone leaves you without ever listening to your last goodbye.

It’s not just missing the person. It’s the feeling that you never got to say everything you needed to say, never got closure, and were left alone with all the words you still wanted to speak.

For those who have been through something similar—does it get better? Do people eventually overcome this phase, or do you simply learn to live with the silence?

I’d genuinely like to hear from people who made it through.

I was isolated for years. Never allowed to have other friends. Now that I ended my friendship with her I’m alone. I hate using social media because it still has all her friends on it and reminders of my life before. She was very mean to me. Very controlling and manipulative. If I set a boundary with her she would punish me by not talking to me for weeks. I don’t understand why I feel so lonely. I have a loving husband who has been supportive of me for 10 years but when he’s busy and I’m alone I sometimes feel like being lonely is how I am supposed to feel.

I (18F) am in a bad spot in my life right now. I struggle with depression, and this is likely the main contributing factor to my feelings about my friend (also 18F).

My best friend is my favourite person. We spend a decent amount of time together/texting, and we both value each other strongly. The problem is that I have become too dependent on her. I find myself thinking of her as my only source of happiness. I count down the days until I get to see her, anticipate her texts, and am painfully upset when our meet-ups end. I can connect these feelings to my lack of enjoyment with life in general. I have no passions or prospects, so she is my only source of comfort, fun and understanding. I am clearly clinging to all the emotions she brings to my otherwise colourless life.

I finally decided this was a problem after I recently went on a short trip with this friend, which once over, left me absolutely beside myself with grief over losing the ability to see her non-stop. The end of that trip resulted in my depression instantly becoming the worst it has ever been, and I am still recovering from the severity of it. No point going in to detail, but I was frequently in tears and had completely lost my appetite for days.

This is simply causing too much anguish in my life. I want to spend all my time with my best friend. She wants to go to uni, spend time with her family, and have her own husband and kids - meaning she has priorities I am going to find too painful to see be placed over me in the future (and am already selfishly dreading).

I want to fix this. I am afraid to lose the strong love I have for her, but I cannot cope anymore. Lucky she is not aware of the extent of my feelings, but this is clearly unhealthy. I would hate to ruin what is the best thing in my life, and what is a very strong and beautiful relationship. I would also hate to hurt her, make her uncomfortable, etc because she does not deserve that at all. Please help

Hi, my favorite person (21F) and I (18F) have been no contact for about two months, after I finally found the strength to try to quit our deeply toxic friendship for good. Everyone told me it would be hard at first but slowly get better and I would forget about her soon, but I feel like my feelings are just frozen in time and it's like I last saw her yesterday. I think about her just as much as I did before. And I still split somehow, even with no external stimuli from her to start the spiral. At times I've gotten so angry that I almost texted her that I hate her out of the blue, but I know that wouldn't give me any satisfaction as she would just block me and I would feel crazy.

I miss her so so much but I also know that I just miss the idea of her and if I ever actually went back it would be a living hell like it was before. I'm just so sad all the time, like I'm mourning the three or four years of my teenagehood that I spent trying to build my life in a way that she would find appealing and attractive. I'm on a high dose of antidepressants, but they seem to do nothing to me and I am still able to cry all the time. I've had seven different therapists, including DBT, but they all annoyed me so much and I dreaded appointments. I have many interests, but I'm often too sad to indulge in them. I used to read a lot, but now it seems pointless since I was really just reading to seem more educated to her, I think. Perhaps not only because of that, though. My friends provide little comfort. I feel like I've tried everything. What now?

I am 25F graduated from my masters last December,2025 but my course ended in September 2025. I graduated from University of Liverpool in masters in advanced computer science.

Since last September. I did not apply to a single job. I get very anxious when I think about it. I am a physically weak person.still I chose to do physically demanding jobs and had many health complications over applying for an IT job.Even now, I cry when I think of applying to a job and end up not applying. Am very bad at interviews and talking to people.where I am currently working at(a warehouse) people are very rude to me and say I am slow and do not do my job properly. They are right . I messed up too many times.

I feel like “if I can’t even do a simple task,how can I do something complex”.

I tried as a waitress and I was scolded all the time for being bad at it. I keep forgetting things and I can’t keep track track of time or what’s happening around me. I try harder and harder but it’s getting worse and worse. I keep double checking everything I do to not make mistakes and then it turns out late.If I do anything fast,there’s always a mistake in it

How do I improve myself

I’m stuck in a cycle of feeling replaceable by people I care about. How do I get out of this?

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but I'm exhausted and honestly don't know what to do anymore.

I've always had very few friendships. I don't have a big group of friends; I basically have one group, and even within that I tend to get very attached to a few people. When someone becomes important to me, they become a really important part of my life. I don't seem to know how to have casual friendships easily.

I have always had this fear that people will eventually choose someone else over me. I see people around me having their own groups, multiple close friends, different circles, etc., while for me the few people I have become my first priority. So when their priorities change, I don't just feel disappointed. I feel like I'm being replaced.

About a year ago, I met a girl who became a very close friend. We bonded when she was going through a difficult period in her life. I was there for her a lot, and the friendship became very important to me.

As she started healing and changing, she naturally started reconnecting with some of the friends she had previously complained about and spending more time with them again. I started feeling like I was slowly being pushed to the side.

At one point I brought it up and she told me, “You are separate and they are separate. I deal with you both in different ways. I don't want to mix you guys.”

I understand logically that people can have different friendships and different groups. But emotionally, that really hurt me. I think what I heard was, “You aren't as important as you thought you were.”

Since then, something in me has changed.

All the insecurities I had kept buried inside me for years suddenly came back to the surface because of this situation. Things I didn't even realize were such big issues for me became impossible to ignore.

We still talk every day. From the outside, you could probably look at our friendship and say everything is fine.

But internally I'm constantly questioning it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm only needed when she's bored, lonely, or doesn't have anyone else to talk to. I don't know if that's actually true, but that's how it feels to me sometimes.

She has her own life. She goes out, has other friends, does her own thing, and seems able to live normally without constantly thinking about the friendship.

Meanwhile, I think about it way too much.

She actually left me once. I chased after her because for me this friendship meant something huge. I couldn't just accept losing her and move on. I think that's where I really started realizing how differently we may experience friendship.

For me, friendship/relationships are extremely important. For her, I sometimes feel like it's just one part of her life.

And I don't know how to reconcile those two things.

The worst part is that I feel like I'm constantly lowering myself to keep people.

If I speak about how I feel, I'm scared I'll push them away.

If I don't speak about it, I feel like I'm abandoning myself.

So I keep trying to find the perfect balance, and I'm completely burned out.

I've already lost a lot of myself trying to protect these relationships. Probably 50% of me at this point feels like it's just focused on whether people are staying or leaving.

I've tried telling her some of this, but she doesn't really ask me about it afterwards. My other friends don't really ask either. So I end up carrying all of it myself.

And I know the obvious advice is going to be “leave, have some self-respect, move on.”

But honestly, it isn't that simple for me.

I live in a small town. My friends live somewhere else. I don't have many opportunities to meet people here. Last time something like this happened, I literally left Bengaluru and went straight back home because I couldn't handle it. Since then I've become scared of moving again.

People say “get hobbies” or “read books, watch movies, listen to music,” but none of that feels enjoyable to me right now. I don't want to distract myself. I want to understand why I'm like this and how people actually get out of this pattern.

I'm at the point where part of me wants to just leave everyone and be alone because at least then nobody can choose someone else over me.

But another part of me is terrified of being alone.

That's the contradiction I'm stuck in.

My brain keeps telling me:

“If this person leaves, that's it. Who am I going to find after them? What if there isn't anyone else?”

And because I believe that, I tolerate things and situations that I probably wouldn't tolerate if I genuinely believed I could be okay on my own.

I don't want to become someone who doesn't care about people. I actually want deep friendships. I want to be able to love people and have them matter to me without constantly being terrified that they're going to replace me.

Has anyone here experienced something similar?

Especially people who had very few friendships and became extremely attached to the people they did have.

How did you get yourself back?

How did you learn to care about someone without making their presence the thing that determines whether you're okay?

I don't necessarily want advice telling me to immediately cut her off. I want to understand how to stop losing myself while still being capable of having relationships.

I'd genuinely appreciate hearing from people who have actually been through this and gotten to the other side.

my boyfriend broke up with me and i have no friends. i’m barely keeping myself alive and idk how im gna keep living i just don’t see the point. how do i get over him and this situation without losing my life

Hi, I’m 20yo in South Europe and I got a terrible depression and I’m still recovering, I lost all my energy and passion for things I used to like and now I have 0 hobbies. My closed friend group left me behind because Im not fun to be around anymore and I’d like to find new ideas of what can I do, specially if they lead to a friendly community. I like creative things in general I just feel I’m too bad to do any of them

My name is Mels, I'm a 29-year-old motion designer.
A person I completely trusted betrayed me. As a result, I lost all my money and ended up in heavy debt. Right now, I have zero money, severe burnout, and constant panic about tomorrow.
I know I have to rebuild everything from scratch, but my brain keeps looping the betrayal and I barely have energy to get out of bed.
I need advice on two real things:

1. How did you mentally force yourself to start working when you felt completely broken?
2. If you survived total debt and zero balance
   — what was your very first step?
   I'm open to chatting or talking with anyone who has been through this. Thanks for reading.e. Thanks for reading, any advice or words of support mean a lot right now.

I (27, non-binary, any pronouns) have never dated anyone or so much as held hands with someone in a romantic context. I'm autistic and was bullied pretty relentlessly in school, so I missed out on exploring any of that stuff in my teens/early adulthood.

I feel too old to be completely inexperienced, and like there's no easy "entry point" to romance/sex. If I'd never learnt to swim as a child, I could go to a local pool and start in the shallow end, hire a teacher or just look up videos of people teaching swimming to learn how. But I can't do that here.

All the advice I seem to find is just like "put yourself out there" and "be yourself", but that's not useful because I don't know *how*. Making friends is already a struggle for me, but at least I know how to make small talk and have conversations with people. Even if I don't make friends with them, I can usually carry on a conversation with someone, while being reasonably sure I won't offend them or make them uncomfortable. I don't know how to do that with romance/sex. I don't even know how I'm supposed to tell another person might be interested/receptive. I've only ever been flirted with twice (once where the other person made a transphobic joke, possibly trying to determine if I had a dick or not; and the other was someone who approached me at work and started asking "why are you single?" and generally making me uncomfortable), so I don't have any real life examples to pull from for what flirting can/does look like.

I know I can't wait around expecting someone to flirt with *me*, but the idea of making the first move is petrifying.

I've tried dating apps, but everyone I see on there seems so much more experienced and like they know exactly what they want, and I *really* don't.

Bars/nightclubs aren't a good option either because I don't really drink/don't get drunk, being around drunk people makes me uncomfortable, and with being autistic, the loud music is both overstimulating and means I wouldn't be able to hear what anyone was saying anyway.

The one local meet up group for queer people is small, and focused around friendship and community building, and I'm new to the group. I don't want to test anything out there because I don't want to weird anyone out or make them uncomfortable, or lose the only community I have access to if something went wrong and I felt like I couldn't go back.

I've asked for advice in other places, but just get a lot of "just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks", which I find really unhelpful. Like I don't know how to make spaghetti, never mind how to throw it. I need some actual pointers and not just "get out there, champ".

There was a writing website I liked a lot when I was like 11 and I used it until the age of 14-15... it suddenly shutdown one day in 2024 and I quit writing due to writers block for nearly 2 years since then... I lost all my friends and I feel like I never really moved on from that website. I deleted my account on there after it shutdown but I just can't seem to move on even though it's been 2 years... I wish I could have those days again. I miss my old friends on there. I feel like everything is lost in the void now. It shutting down felt like a fever dream. I miss those days and I can't move on from my 14 year old depressed little poet self T^T I'm 17 and feel extremely lost at the moment. I no longer feel as passionate about writing as I did back then...

I (25M) had depressive episodes before we were even together, but they never lasted this long. We broke up a month ago (we were only together for 4 months) and I’m still not feeling any better. I know that’s normal for breakups, but I can’t even enjoy my hobbies anymore (video games, reading or photography.). I went to see the new Spider-Man movie (Brand New Day) by myself thinking it would help, but it didn’t (a few scenes in there did nothing but make me think of her). I isolate myself from others when I feel depressed or anxious so I’ve just been sleeping and working 8 hours one day then 16 hours the next shift. I don’t know what to do anymore. My thoughts are mostly negative, some about not even being around anymore. My friends and coworkers say “You’ll find someone else” and “There are plenty more people out there just because this one didn’t work out” Those 4 months with her were literally the best relationship I have ever had. I’ve been having panic attacks, sleep paralysis and I haven’t been eating much if at all. I mostly just drink water all day. One of my coworkers suggested going to the gym (my brother also suggested the same thing.), Maybe I should try to force myself to do my usual hobbies?…

I'm 22M and lately I've been feeling mentally and emotionally overwhelmed. I recently finished my MBA and started a field sales job where I'm travelling between shops/dealers most of the day, so there's very little interaction with colleagues and I spend a lot of time alone. On top of that, I've become emotionally attached to one girl, things didn't work out, and I've been overthinking her messages, replies and everything related to her instead of simply seeing her as another girl and moving on. Being away from home, having a lonely career, dealing with heartbreak and having so much time alone with my thoughts has started affecting me mentally. I don't know if I'm just going through a normal rough phase in my early 20s or if I'm genuinely becoming mentally unstable. For anyone who's been through heartbreak, loneliness and career confusion at the same time, how did you get yourself out of it and become mentally stronger?

I'm 40 this year. I don't have close friends anymore and I'm not close with my family. Most of the people who used to matter are either gone or cut me off. For a long time the people I considered family were my ex's family. I knew them since I was a teenager. Her mom was like a second mother to me, her brother-in-law was one of my best friends for almost 20 years. Then I got with her in 2014. We were together for years, engaged, had a house, talked about kids, the whole future planned out. I caught her cheating about 6 months before the wedding. She left and her whole family cut me off with basically no explanation. That was over 7 years ago. I still think about her and that life constantly. The memories don't fade. I dream about it. Random stuff still sets it off. I feel empty a lot of the time. I have a girlfriend now who is good to me, but I can't connect the same way and I feel guilty about that. I don't really have anyone I can talk to about how bad it still is. I work, I come home, I try to get through the days. Most of the time I just feel alone and stuck. I miss having people who actually knew me and gave a shit. I miss feeling like I belonged somewhere. Not looking for advice on "moving on." Just tired of carrying this with nobody to talk to about it.

Im very depressed because ive been on subs, trying to dm people but everytime I think I have a good convo I either get ghosted or don’t get a reply and then I feel lonely. Im very lonely because ever since I was in school I didn’t make any friends and when I tried to make friends in elementary or middle people mistreated me because they thought I was annoying when I was trying to fit in. I also didn’t make many friends in school since I was autistic and well I was made fun of a lot because of my autism. Then I had discord for a couple years and I got harrased a lot there because I made some mistakes and had to learn things the hard way when I did it was not easy. Also people on there said some nasty things to me and then I didn’t get discord anymore from that point. Now I don’t got many irl friends, I can’t download apps because of things I shouldn’t have done which I still regret to this day. I wish I had a Girlfriend but I don’t sadly at 22. I can’t do dating apps and nothing all I got is Reddit and that’s it. I also went through so much in covid with my depression of my dry eyes that I felt even tho they were not dry and me stuttering when I would talk and well talk to myself. But now idk what to do anymore no one I talk to has a good convo with me and after I do I get ghosted and try to find more people and the same thing happens. I wish I didn’t have mild depression but I do and I hope it ends in the future and hopefully better days will be coming for me in the future but right now it’s tough for me. :(

I am a 26F currently working and doing my absolute best to keep my life together. almost a year ago my life went down hill and I can confidently say i hit rock bottom. Brutal break up, health issues and issues at my work.

i have started to heal however the breakup affected me so deeply that I cannot see myself in any relationship. even tho I am an honest, genuine person, I love so hard and I am always there , oh never treat anyone as temporary but I have decided that love isn’t for me anymore..

I have one issue that is my need to feel chosen , u feel so envious of girls in happy relationships, why them and not me. I keep asking myself what do they have that am lacking abd yet I fail to find the answer. Every time I meet with a guy colleague let that be at gym or in the workplace they talk about their partners with so much love and passion and I could never know what do other girls have that I don’t have . why I am never chosen always close enough to begin chosen yet not chosen at all.

while I have decided that love isn’t for me, i know that deep down I want to feel loved and to give the love because I am very much cab of loving.

if anyone has gone though similar situation please advise how did you overcome this phase?

I already have a good job trying my best to improve myself, completing my masters degree and going to the gym regularly.,

what else can I do do set myself free